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Florence

Good by from J-term 2015 – Pretty Fly For an Italian Guy

“You have five minutes to harvest all the organs.” I couldn’t have said it better, Dwight. But actually…

Welcome, one and all to what very well could be the last major installment of your favorite blog abroad! Or at least I assume it’s your favorite. It’s your favorite, right? You know it is, don’t lie. So let’s get down to business to summarize this trip. Did we spend it moving or just in Florence? It’s been busy days full of good stuff, but you can bet before we’re through, somehow I’ll make an Italian out of you. If any of you realized what I just did and managed to sing that last bit, you’re probably qualified to write this blog from now on.

Moving along the small streets of Sienna

Yesterday we took a trip to Sienna in the morning and then headed up to San Giomignano. Lucky for us the time of departure was taking a turn for the best since each day was starting progressively later. As you could have guessed, we drove a ways down to Sienna for what would be about 3 hours of touring and roaming. We met our guide by the entrance to St Dominic’s, the smaller of the churches of the city. By this point we were burnt out with all the tours we’ve been going on, so we weren’t too pleased to be given yet another headset to pin to our ear for the day. Nonetheless, we set forth for a relatively short trek. Our guide led us through the small, populated street which we discovered was the main road that led to Rome back in the day. Actually, Sienna is divided into 17 districts that all had their own horse racing teams. Each street had that district’s insignia above the street’s name so as to signify which zone people were in. The only zone that was completely neutral was the center of the city, otherwise referred to as the Campo. It’s in that square where the horse races are held, which really only lasts 75 seconds. All their rivalries depend on the outcome of that yearly race. A fun fact on top, for any of you who have seen Quantum of Solace (the James Bond movie), the horse race at the beginning is the one that occurs in the very same Campo.

Like a large zebra…

Anyways, we passed by the Campo to get straight to the Duomo. Duomo is the term Italians use for the main (and largest) church in the region. In the case of Sienna, it was positioned at the top of the hill so its dome was visible from everywhere in the city and from up there one could see practically everything. While it was a massive cathedral, it wasn’t quite St Peters massive. Still, it was pretty impressive. To save you time, I won’t go into detail about it, but rather you can admire the picture I took.

A large, spacious zebra

After perusing the cathedral, we took a route around the back to get a view of the valley. On the other side of the valley was St Dominic’s, so it was interesting to see where we had come from. Continuing around the back we came upon the baptistry of the cathedral. I’ve got to say, it seemed like a weird place to be, but oh well. That’s Italy summed up for you. Further down the hill we came back to the Campo. It was at that point the guide released us and as fast as hounds on the hunt, we ran off to find suitable meals and stores. You know how I mentioned the districts earlier? Well most of the stores in the area sold the flags of the teams and most of us bought one. The teams have flags with very strange animals on them, going from giraffes to porcupines and even to snails.

Once our time was up, we got back in the bus and journeyed north to San Giomignano (pronounced Gym – an – yano, referred to as San Jimmy John’s). It’s a terribly small city on the top of a well placed hill overlooking vast rolling fields and vineyards. As I was informed, the city used to have two powerful families that fought for dominance by building towers taller than the other’s. In its prime, it had 72 towers, but currently it has 14. Not only that, but it used to be an unknown city, but one day some guy put up an article on the internet and then tourists arrived in droves. Because of that, most of the shops lining the streets catered to tourists. Lucky for us, it was pretty much empty since this is low season, but during the summer it’s supposedly hard to move due to the packs of tourists.

A small city…

Well we spent 2 hours exploring on our own. Some people climbed the tower, others went off shopping, and others just enjoyed the view. It was a realllllllly nice view.

… with a grand view

Two hours passed by and we travelled to our nearby destination; a local vineyard where we would have a wine tasting. Our bus arrived at what looked like a gated villa, but inside the gate were vineyards and barrels upon barrels of what we could only assume was wine. We were led into the nearby house that was outfitted with a huge kitchen and large tables. I would guess they do this moderately often. But anyways we were greeted by our host, Luigi’s nephew. He explained the wines to us and instructed us in proper sniffing and drinking techniques that were quite effective. As we drank the wines they brought plate after plate of food that progressively got more amazing as time went on (not sure if because of the wine or just because it was good). Next to our plates they had a convenient note sheet where we could write down our thoughts. Even more conveniently, the other side of the note sheet was an order sheet for their wines. After that amazing tasting and meal, that order sheet was put to good use by everybody.

After tasting the wine, we all went straight to purchasing more

That wraps up yesterday, so let’s continue on to today. On this lovely Saturday we went through the Academia museum and then Florence’s Duomo. Like any other day, we met our guide in the morning and put on the headsets. We promptly set off for the Academia museum, which is the museum that houses Michelangelo’s famous David statue. There was a lot within the museum, but it was clear that the entire place revolved around that statue. David was completed when Michelangelo was 31 and it stands 17 feet tall. It’s fairly disproportionate since it was intended to be placed at the top of the building. You know how people make it out to be so super impressive? They’re right. It is.

Here we see the famous statue in its natural habitat

We spent a while admiring the statue and listening to our guide ramble, but then we got tired and left the museum. Proceeding down the street we came up to the Duomo. Like Sienna’s cathedral, Florence’s has a zebra striped pattern.

The zebra trend continues

Unlike Sienna’s, Florence’s has a supermassive, double dome made of brick. Until fairly recently, the secrets of its construction was unknown since the man behind it, Brunelleschi, was very secretive about his work. It was this very dome that we would ascend for the next hour. Its corridors and stairs were very narrow and, once at the dome’s actual bottom, forced people to share them with people traveling back down. It was a bit cramped to say the least.

A packed journey to the top

From the top, there was a spectacular view. We were lucky that the weather had cleared up after the last couple of rainy and downcast days, so we had a bright and sunny view of all of Florence. The top was fairly cramped with all sorts of people, but every now and then there was a clearing so we were able to snag some pics. All in all, we spent about 1.25 hours going up and down the dome at what seemed like a snail’s pace. It was fun but some people weren’t feeling good about those heights.

The bell tower doesn’t have anything on our height

You can see everything!

Well, that’s all folks! Tomorrow we head to the Galileo museum and then back to Rome for our flight. I might have a chance to update you all, but don’t hold your breath in case. We’re all pretty nervous about coming back because we’ll miss Italy but we’ll also be happy to return to the norm. I think most people’s list of “things to do” includes Chipotle, actually. In case this is the actual end, thank you all for following the blog! It’s been really fun all along the way. I also have to thank our professors Barbara Zell and John Walker for doing an excellent job, as well as the school and our coordinator Claudio. This trip has been an excellent time from every perspective. We’ll see you on the other side, folks!

– Chris Apfeld

January 24, 2015 by

Field Trips!, Florence, Naples, Universities

From the North to the South

When I asked for a quote to start the blog like I’ve been doing recently, do you know what I got? I got, “Merry Christmas you filthy animal.” Thanks Claire. Tons of segues I can make out of that.

Well it’s been a couple of days since you’ve heard from us, and that can be explained. Sunday, as I mentioned last time, was a free day. Some people went back to Assisi, others to the soccer game, and others still to watch the Packers game. Nothing too special to dedicate a blog post to. Yesterday was filled with Naples activities, but unfortunately the hotel wifi couldn’t handle all 21 of us logging in at the same time, and so it broke. Our fault, for sure. Today we went from Naples to Pompeii, back to Naples, and then all the way up to Florence. I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

Early in the morning (by college standards), we gathered to say our goodbyes to Francesco, the best cook around. It was heartfelt and filled with handshakes and slaps on the face. We salute you Francesco. A couple of hours later we hopped on a bus and moved on over to termini station to board our train. The train ride only took about 1 hour, so it was pretty easy. Coming into the city we could see quite a lot of housing and small streets. While I may not have believed I could get a segue out of that quote at the beginning, it actually is a bit applicable to how I would describe Naples. Dirty. Normally the stereotype with Naples is that it’s full of crime, but if that’s the case then I couldn’t see any of that crime behind broken windows, graffiti coated walls, and all around dirty roads and buildings.

Long narrow streets seems to be their trademark

Once we had made it to the hotel, we were met by our local guide whose name I don’t believe anyone can recall, so in lieu of Gino, I shall dub her Gina. Gina was another college student studying restoration and was pretty quiet (probably because she didn’t know very much english). We embarked on what should have been a guided tour of the city with plenty of explanations along the way but it ended up being far more walking and very little talking. Along the way we stopped at a couple of churches with rather unimpressive architecture, but that’s most likely because we’re spoiled from being in Rome for so long. Gina took us through some back allies that were filled with wooden craft stores that had wooden figurines of the pope right alongside their favorite soccer players. Priorities, right? That took us pretty far out of the way and we eventually made our way back. Before we reached the hotel, we decided to stop at the local castle, which happened to be practically right across the street. From the outside, it looked like a typical castle with plenty of room for a moat. Inside, it also looked like a typical castle. There was a lane marked for entry and other for exiting, so of course we headed the way it lead us. Somehow it led us up into what looked like a court room but at the center was a small wooden box and a picture of some guy with a guitar. You’ve probably guessed by now that we did indeed walk in on a wake. People were crying over this guy and we awkwardly strolled through, not knowing who it was we had walking in on. It turns out the guy was a popular Italian musician who was from Naples. It was certainly an interesting experience…

You wouldn’t expect a wake in there, right?

After that aWAKEening experience, we skipped over to the hotel (some of us literally skipped due to losing a bet) and took a quick break. We didn’t have long before we had to head out for a local pizzeria on the other side of town. Since Naples is the birthplace of pizza, we of course had to learn how to make pizza. At the pizzeria, we were greeted by the staff and escorted to a few tables prepped for what was surely going to be a cooking disaster. Each of us received an apron and hat that read “Pizza school.” We knew right then we were destined to be professionals.

We all prep ourselves for an intense session

The owner of the establishment attempted to teach us how to make dough and some people caught on quickly. As for the rest of us, it was a bit more challenging than we had anticipated. A while and several attempts later, the employees gave us a premade dough and then we all began creating for real. We flattened the dough, added sauce, cheese, and veggies, and beheld our masterpieces. They soon began cooking pizzas for those that finished first, but for the rest of us we had to get by on the restaurant’s own pizza. When all had conceded or finished, we sat down for a full meal and wine. It was all great and probably made our work look completely foolish. Each and every one of us came out of that place with a diploma in pizza making, so it looks like we’re no longer engineers.

Ground zero of the pizza-tastrophe

One night of sleep later, we arrived at today. With another early start, we departed for the University of Naples in downcast and rainy weather. It was a ways out of our area and not particularly obvious. There was a point where the bus began circling the local stadium and we thought we were lost, but apparently the school was located directly next to the arena. The place was made up of a cluster of buildings and we headed straight to the back of them. Inside we were lead to a classroom that overlooked the architecture lab. In that room, we sat through 2 big lectures with the lengthier of the two lasting 1.75 hours. While the material was interesting, sitting there for so long was brutal. The professors explained their involvements in the restoration of places like Piza and local buildings too. After the lectures we headed into the labs to look at their equipment. They had huge machines that could crush with dizzyingly high forces and shake plates to simulate an earthquake. At the moment they had an arch set up for earthquake testing, but the test wasn’t scheduled for another 2 days so we didn’t get to see it in action. Instead, we headed underground to look at the supports for the lab, and that was just as impressive. The shake plates had their own suspended concrete floor that could move separately from the rest of the building so as not to affect the entire grounds by using the machinery. Let’s just say it must have cost a fortune to make all that.

The school’s entrance

Getting back on the bus, we headed south to our next destination, Pompeii.

We arrived around 3 and met up with our tour guide. It was at this point the rain started to come down more than it had been all day. She led us into the main entrance of the city where we had two stray dogs follow us in.

All in all, the city of Pompeii is fairly large, but only 70% of the city is excavated even though the excavation originated in the late 1700s. I could describe to you for pages what we saw, but I’ll give you a brief synopsis. The brickwork was old. Like real old. Like 79 AD old. Most of the main structures survived except for roofs and some walls, so it looks like a ghost town. The roads are made with large stones and have high sidewalks so that water could flow through the streets and people didn’t have to walk in it. Most of the roads were straight, but a few were curved. The general rule was that if you couldn’t see the end of your road, there was most likely a brothel somewhere on it. They had their own mini arena for fights and a theater for shows. The forum was large and open, like you would expect for politicians. Overall, it was an ancient dead city that was incredible to be able to walk through.

Our tour ended around 5 when the park closed, so we had to high tail it out of there. We said goodbye to our guide and hopped on the bus, headed back to the Naples train station for the next leg of our journey. The next ride would take us around 3 hours to reach our final destination: Florence. It was not more than an hour ago that we arrived, hopped on another bus, and headed over to our hotel that would accommodate us for all but one of our remaining nights. It’s got larger rooms than we’ve had so far but the wifi is spotty, so it’ll be a struggle to post to the blog or do anything electronic. Sorry.

A surprising amount of green

Well, that’s all for the past couple of days. Coming up tomorrow is our big day to tour some of the supercar factories, including Lamborghini. Did I mention a couple of us get to drive the Lamborghinis? Yeah. It’s going to be amazing. Stay tuned.

– Chris Apfeld

By the way, the internet isn’t working in my favor, so I’ll try and get the pictures to this and any upcoming posts up asap, but no guarantee it’ll work. It that’s the case, I’ll rectify that as soon as we’re within good wifi or back in the states. Sorry for the inconvenience.

January 20, 2015 by